As much as the field of hearing, speech and language sciences (also known as communication sciences and disorders) is dynamic and interdisciplinary, so is the breadth of Dr. Bomjun Kwon's experiences and knowledge. Originally trained as an engineering acoustician in South Korea, upon the arrival in the US he fell in love with the field that helps individuals with disabilities while uncovering the hidden knowledge of auditory perception and language processing. After receiving a PhD degree from University of Iowa and briefly experiencing the life of a post-doc at House Ear Institute, he ventured into industry and worked for Cochlear Americas, where he was involved in research and development of next-generation cochlear implants and playing a role of a liaison with clinical personnel. Thirsty for research expanding our knowledge with less short-term commercial profitability, 5 years later he came back to academia and taught at University of Utah, and subsequently at The Ohio State University. He joined us in 2012, further expanding the research caliber of our department.

His main areas of specialty and research interest include acoustics, psychoacoustics, speech perception, and technical innovations of cochlear implants--particularly new coding algorithms for sound processing. He also invented a computer scripting language for generation and processing of sounds, AUditory syntaX (AUX), developed several computer programs utilizing it to help researchers in their experiments and teachers for classroom demonstrations, and released them for free to a wide range of academic users, not only students and researchers in auditory science but also sound/media technicians.

The real reason that he is at Gallaudet (shhh, this is a secret) is, he would like to introduce the beauty of music to Deaf people who adopted a cochlear implant. Deaf people and cochlear implants---an odd mix? Maybe in the past, but not any more. Further, cochlear implants and music---some might consider it another odd mix and it is true that there is a tremendous challenge. Dr. Kwon takes an outside-the-box approach and envisions a new kind of music of, by and for the Deaf people, regardless of the degree of their use of the device for speech communication. For further information, click here.